American Airlines and Southwest Airlines in Dallas DFW and Love: competition revives as Wright ends

Dallas based rivals American Airlines and Southwest Airline are unsurprisingly offering different assessments of the current landscape in the market as Southwest enjoys a boost from new long haul flights from its Dallas Love Field headquarters made possible by the lifting of the Wright Amendment, which limited certain long haul operations from the airport.

The new routes and capacity additions have created some pressure for American Airlines, whose top base, hub and headquarters is Dallas/Fort Worth. Its forecast passenger unit revenues for 1Q2015 are falling at a greater rate than its legacy competitors, but American promises to compete fiercely with all the LCCs it encounters in the market place in part by matching their fares.

American also seems to be pulling other levers to combat some of the added capacity in the Dallas market including rebanking DFW, which should improve the overall performance of the hub in 2015.